Historical & Modern City

UC Berkeley undergraduates interested in the Historical and Modern City Course Thread should contact course-threads@berkeley.edu.

From Athens to Rome, San Francisco to Tokyo, the city has existed throughout history as one of the most complex manifestations of human civilization. While cities have existed for thousands of years, the study of cities is an emerging scholarly activity.

Among the many questions that the study of cities raises are those of relationship, including the rapport between time and space; centrality and marginality; national, ethnic, and urban identities; mapping and narrative; and everyday life and material culture. The connections in and among these relationships engage a wide spectrum of topics, such as modernity and modernism, the geography of power, the role of representation, and visual culture.

The Historical & Modern City Course Thread introduces students to historical, theoretical, aesthetic, and other approaches to the city through a variety of interdisciplinary methodologies. Investigating these approaches through a grouping of course offerings in English, Architecture, Art History, and many other departments, the thread engages students in a broad study of cities that paints a portrait of metropolitan evolution and its effects.